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Breaking up from the better-known colleague in a showbiz duo is a risky affair. Larry David went through it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing tale of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his separation from Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in size – but is also at times shot standing in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, facing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer in the past acted the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this picture effectively triangulates his gayness with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: college student at Yale and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned musical theater lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The movie imagines the severely despondent Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the show proceeds, despising its insipid emotionality, hating the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He understands a hit when he views it – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Before the intermission, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film occurs, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his pride in the form of a brief assignment writing new numbers for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in conventional manner attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the movie imagines Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Certainly the world wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who desires Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her exploits with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart partly takes spectator's delight in hearing about these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the film informs us of something rarely touched on in films about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. Yet at one stage, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who will write the songs?

The movie Blue Moon screened at the London cinema festival; it is available on 17 October in the United States, November 14 in the UK and on 29 January in the land down under.